Slate’s original review of “The Office”.

“Besides Carell, almost every other casting choice is a gross miscalculation. The smoldering office romance between Dawn and Tim, which was the emotional motor of the British series, has been downsized to a pallid flirtation between Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Jim (John Krasinski). The writers intelligently abandoned all hope of finding someone with the bizarre phsiognomy of Mackenzie Crook, who played the office toady Gareth in the original series. But his replacement, Dwight (Six Feet Under‘s Rainn Wilson), lacks a comic hook of his own. He’s annoying, yes, but generically so—the kind of office scourge who operates a paper shredder at top volume inches from his co-workers’ desks and chats with the boss in insufferable management-speak.”